Dobsonian Telescope

"An Overview Of One Of The Most Popular Telescope Designs Of All Time."

The Dobsonian Telescope (A.K.A., “Dob"), is arguably the most popular telescope mount designs ever devised. The Dob takes it's name from its inventor, Mr. John Dobson.  (Come on now.  You know how to do it.  Click the blue letters so you can read more about this incredibly interesting individual.)  His goal was simple. Develop a mount that is as simple to use as it is to understand, so you can spend more time looking through the eyepiece than messing with the mount.   

The cheezy picture above will give you the idea about how this mount operates, but it really is intuitive.  It's a lot like a sword.  When you hold it in your hands, there is no doubt how you should use it.  The entire telescope swivels around two axes; around it's base (for azimuth motion) and around the trunion bearings mounted to the telescope tube (for altitude motion).  

The rest, as they say, is history.  There has been so much technology added to this telescope mount design that it is nearly impossible to talk about it all.  But... that is what the internet is for.  Just type "dobsonian telescope" into Google one time, if you do not believe me.

Thanks, John Dobson.  You have made owning a large aperture dobsonian telescope possible for thousands of us simple folks!